blogging | Dan Bailey's Adventure Photography Blog

Three Million Page Views!

Posted on June 21, 2019 by DanJune 21, 2019

I peeked at my WordPress stats the other day and realized that I had just passed three million page views on my blog.

According to Google Analytics, which I didn’t install into 2011, or three years in, I have hit three and a half million page views, with a million and a half unique visitors.

I’m totally blown away by those numbers. After all, I’m just one guy banging away on my keyboard a few times each week. I sit here writing about photography and exploring the ideas about creativity and picture taking that fascinate me, and yet, I’ve managed to attract a few visitors.

I started this blog in March of 2007, and in my first few posts, I featured some few recent skiing photos, liked to a feature article about me that had just been published in Outdoor Photographer Magazine, and wrote a retrospective on my experience being a professional photographer for ten years.

Over the next couple years, I continued to post new images, promote published work and updates to my website, share the occasional tip and write short “news” type articles announcing things like new products, notable events and interesting photography apps.

Occasionally, I would write longer articles about topics that drew my interest, like my personal goodbye to Kodachrome, or do fun pieces, like my 5 Worst Injuries as a Pro Photographer.

Holland America Line’s Mariner Magazine, Fall 2010 issue. Cover and inside photos by Dan Bailey

By 2010, I had started to do more “tips and insight” posts, drawing from nearly fifteen years of experience as a pro shooter. During that time, I also started a freelance position as Senior Contributor to a new photography blog called The Photoletariat, where I wrote the same kind of content, but to a larger audience.

My readership started to grow quite a bit during my two years writing for The Photoletariat and when the site eventually shut down after a two year run, I continued in full force with my own blog, bringing many of those readers with me.

By then, I had started to gain quite a bit of traction with my blog, and as my readership grew, I expanded on my overall approach and the types of content I offered. I wrote my first eBook in the fall of 2010, and by the next year, I had three eBooks under my belt and was contributing articles for a number of other sites as well.

I also discovered that my blog had become a powerful marketing arm for my business and my writing. In many ways, the blog has become the central hub for my business and everything I do as a professional photographer.

My blogging is what led the publisher for Focal Press to reach out and express interest in doing a book with me. It took a couple years to get things rolling, but in the winter of 2015, my first print book hit the stands.

Through the years, I’ve continued to refine both my writing and teaching style, I’ve published more eBooks and print books and have even been recognized as a top photography blogger in the industry. And, I’ve found that my blog has allowed me to connect with a huge number of other photographers around the world, some of who have ended up becoming close friends.

In addition, this outlet has allowed me to explore aspects of writing in a very personal and fulfilling way. For example, many of my blog posts are nothing more than thinly disguised journaling and travel writing pieces. I’ve always been fascinated by the craft of writing, and it looks like I accidentally became someone who now does it for a living. Who would have thought?

When I sit back and look at where this has come since March of 2007, I’m totally blown away. I know I’ve put in countless hours of hard work, writing, tweaking pages, researching plugins and continually refining things, but the reality is that you guys are the cog that has made this all happen.

Whether you’re a regular visitor, or if you’ve only stopped by once during a Google search, your readership is what has made me a successful blogger, and in many ways, a successful photographer.

I am so grateful for your support, especially those of you who have stuck with me since The Photoletariat and the early days of my blog. In fact, if you’re a longtime reader, I would love to hear how many years you’ve been following me, or if you even remember The Photoletariat!

With that in mind, to everyone who has ever read or shared my posts, I just want to extend my very sincere thanks to you guys for visiting my blog over three million times. I know that some blogs get a few million hits every single month, but again, I’m just one guy and the fact that I’ve attracted numbers like that simply blows my mind.

Anyway, I hope that you continue to stick with me. I’ve still got a lot of ideas that I want to write about… they never seem to stop coming, so if you’ll keep reading, I’ll keep pounding out more blog posts.

Take care and have a great weekend.

-Dan

Follow @Danbaileyphoto

My 10 Favorite Blog Posts I Wrote in 2018

Posted on January 4, 2019 by DanJanuary 4, 2019

Happy new year! Now that 2018 is officially a wrap, it’s been fun to look back and remember all the adventures, projects and fun times that the past year brought.

With my 50th birthday trip to Islay, 2,674 miles of bike riding including 206,900 feet of climbing, numerous events at camera stores around the country and the chance to meet so many of you guys in person, the X-T3, some fantastic flying opportunities, the paperback edition of X SERIES UNLIMITED, my new landscape eBook, lots of memorable images and a super fun Fuji Summit in the Great Smokies, 2018 will be a tough act to follow. I hope this is the same with you.

I always enjoy looking back and seeing what I wrote during the past year. In chronological order, and to recap and highlight articles you might have missed, here are my 10 favorite blog posts that I published during the 12 months of 2018.

1. The 5 Lenses I Used Most in 2017

I included this one because it’s a concise look back at what I shot the previous year and the lenses I used to create some of my favorite images from that period. It’s always fun to review older images and see how your vision and technique evolved over a particular stretch of time.

2. Don’t Fall Into This Trap With Your Photography

This was my “public service announcement” from last February, and it resonated strongly with readers. In this insightful and inspiring post, I encouraged photographers to avoid falling into the “technical trap” with photography, and focus on what really matters in our craft.

It was a reminder to embrace the joy, the wonder, the light, the moments and the people that excite us in and compel us to lift our cameras. Those things matter so much more than pixels, noise, ISO Invariance, sensor size or what camera you use. Hopefully this post can help you align your photographic priorities for the coming year.

3. 28 Years Later…

February 2, 2018 marked my 28-year anniversary of when I bought my first real camera and began my amazing journey with photography.

In this post, I share a few of my old images and spoke of a time when things like email and Instagram didn’t even exist yet, when I still used this thing called film, which came in little metal cans, stamping and captioning slides by hand, and falling in love with Veliva for the very first time.

I ponder what it might have been like as an outside to watch young, 22-year old Dan Bailey become enamored with photography and follow it with such enthusiasm for nearly 3 decades. What an exciting journey it’s been.

4. Challenging The Traditional Definition of Alpenglow

In March, I wrote a long post explaining exactly what Alpenglow is and where the term originated. I also challenged what many people accept as the common definition of Alpenglow and used my experiences photographing mountain sunsets from the air to back up my hypothesis.

This post provoked a great deal of discussion and polite arguments in the comment section and on social media. Is my hypothesis right? I can see it both ways. What do you think?

5. Sunset over the Shores of Bowmore on the Isle of Islay

I celebrated my 50th birthday this past year with a weeklong trip to the Isle of Islay off the west coast of Scotland. Islay is where the really peaty, smoky scotch whisky comes from, and being a newfound whisky connoisseur, I enjoyed visiting and touring all 8 distilleries on the island.

This post was more of a travelogue that touched on whisky production, memories of a similar pilgrimage to Spain 15 years prior, and capturing photos of the area. When I was younger, I wanted to be a travel writer. I even took some travel wiring courses after college. Fortunately, my blog allows me the perfect outlet to practice those skills and produce my own self-directed traveling writing stories and photo essays.

6. Using Bold vs. Subdued Colors in Your Photography

I’m endlessly fascinated by the notion that photography is a representational art form. In a handful of “tips” articles I wrote last year to discuss this concept, I shared my ideas about how photographers can express their creativity by using different techniques to add variety to their images.

In this post, I talked about the effects of using bold and subtle color palettes to tell specific stories about your subject matter. Whether you do this in camera or during the processing stage, you can use these ideas to impart a unique look to your photographs.

7. The Coolest Action Photo I’ve Ever Shot

On September 22, 2018, I captured the coolest action photo I’ve ever shot in my 22 years as a pro adventure and outdoor photographer. Made with the new Fujifilm X-T3, I was so excited by this image, I wrote a long blog post talking about how every single technique, creative idea and camera skill I’ve ever learned has led up to this point.

From that standpoint, it would only surmise that right now, I am the best photographer I have ever been, and are thus capable of capturing the best photo I’ve ever made.

I really enjoyed writing this article and exploring the ideas of practice, experience, learning, constant improvement and striving to be the best photographer you can possibly be. I hope you enjoy it.

8. 10 Essential Autofocus Tips for Sports & Action Photography

I read many comments from people who struggle with autofocus. The truth is that nailing sharp shots of fast moving subject matter is very hard to do and it requires a great deal of skill, experience and knowing exactly how to use your camera.

More often than not, we’re the weak link in the process, not the camera. With this in mind, I wrote a post outlining 10 essential tips that will help you increase your percentage of sharp images when shooing things that move.

Whether you shoot sports, wildlife, or children, this post will help you increase your proficiency with autofocus. This was one of three action photography related tips posts I wrote during the second half of 2018. You can find the other two posts here and here.

9. Looking Back on our 2001 Himalayan Mountain Bike Trip

In July of 2001, I did a six-week mountain bike touring expedition to Ladakh, India with my longtime friend Eric Parsons, who just celebrated the 10-year mark for his company that makes bicycle frame bags. I was prompted to write this post after waking up and seeing a familiar photo staring back at me on the Revelate Designs Instagram feed one particular morning in back in October.

Immediately flooded with memories, I sat down and wrote a fun account of our trip, how it came about, my history of adventuring with Eric and what it was like to ride my bike over the highest passes in the world. I also shared a number of images from our time over there.

I still look back on this adventure as one of the coolest, most amazing trips I’ve ever done, so it was fun to relive it here on my blog.

10. Experimenting with Monochromatic Color Photography

As with my post about using bold and subdued colors in your photography, this post explored another creative technique you can use to vary the style of your imagery, shooting monochrome in color.

What I mean by this is capturing images that revolve around a single dominant color palette and composing so that you either reduce or in some cases, eliminate any other hue that’s not directly related to your main color.

I love using this technique, and it’s one that can really inspire you as you survey your scenes and try to think of unique ways to portray your subjects. At any rate, it can be a fun visual exercise.

So, those are my favorite posts from the past year. I hope you take the time to read or revisit at least some them, especially if there were one or two that you missed.

As always, thanks for your support during 2018 and I wish you the best for a great year ahead. I look forward to the next few months and seeing where my own ideas take me and my photography.

Follow @Danbaileyphoto

28 Years Later…

Posted on February 2, 2018 by DanFebruary 2, 2018

Today is February 2, more commonly known as Groundhog Day, and today, Punxsutawney Phil did not disappoint. In Central Pennsylvania, the famous little critter crawled out of his hole and saw his shadow, which of course, signifies that we have six more weeks of winter.

I live in Alaska, so this is pretty much a no brainer. Of course we have six more weeks of winter, if not eight, or ten. Or even twelve, depending how early April shapes up.

However, I’m not here to discuss the length of the seasons or an odd 132-year old tradition that’s based on the hibernation patterns of the common woodchuck.

To me, February 2 is special for another reason. It’s signifies the day I bought my first real camera.

On the afternoon of February 2, 1990, I walked into Bromfield Camera in downtown Boston and threw down $550 for a silver Nikon FM2 and 50mm f/1.4 lens. That moment marked the official start of this amazing photography journey, which as of today, has lasted 28 years.

28 years is a very long time. I have friends who aren’t even 28 years old yet and many more who weren’t even in first grade when I was roaming around the streets of Boston with my trusty Nikon slung around my neck.

An entire generation of Instagrammers didn’t even exist yet when I was out hiking and scrambling around rocks with the camera during those early days or when I took my first big photo trip to Nepal in 1993. Many of the young contemporary photographers who are making waves in the industry now were but pimply-faced junior high kids when I was selling my first photos to magazines and shooting my first assignments.

And at the same time, there are people in my life who have watched this entire journey from a front row seat, or at least part of it. How interesting would that have been, to watch young Dan Bailey become enamored with photography and follow it with such enthusiasm for nearly 3 decades.

28 years is a very long time. That first Nikon ended up getting stolen, but I bought another. When I first started, I shot Kodak Gold 200 print film. Within a year, I started shooting Kodachrome, and in 1993, bought my first roll of Velvia and began my long love affair with the Fuji colors.

Back then, I was captioning my slides by hand with a fine point black pen and stamping them “©Daniel H. Bailey” with a custom stamp and one of those ink pads. I’d sit in my little studio apartment in Cambridge, MA, and get one or two pages done in the evening after work.

On a big night, I’d get 3 pages captioned- 60 sides. Eventually, I got a little beige Mac Classic and a printer and graduated to using Cradoc Captionwriter software to print out my captions on Avery Labels.

K2, Karakoram Himalayas, Pakistan

By the mid-90s, I had fully embraced autofocus and as that decade came to a close, I was well on my way as a budding pro photographer. Each week, I shipped out pages full of my best slides to clients and prospective clients. My life revolved around my light table and file boxes full of slide pages. I got to know my Fed Ex and UPS delivery guys quite well. We were on a first name basis.

I had also started teaching photography classes. Top pro adventure photographer and National Geographic contributor Keith Ladzinski was one of my students. Imagine that: in a way, I taught the best of the best, or at least made an impact. At the time, my camera arsenal included the N90, N90s, F100 and F5.

In the early 2000s, my skills and reputation had grown considerably, although that didn’t stop the extreme downturn of the Post 9/11 economy. I weathered that big recession and continued on.

In 2003, when my good friend Paul closed his high-end photo lab, I went digital. I bought a Nikon D200 and had to learn an entirely new way of editing, cataloging, and a brand new skill called “processing.” There was a whole new term, called “workflow.” Mine involved Photo Mechanic, Photoshop v.3 and iView Media Pro. Fifteen year later, I’m still using Photo Mechanic and Photoshop, and MediaPro is now included in Capture One Pro.

I wasn’t using film anymore, although I was scanning my best slides to disk and still sending out my old Velvia images to clients. They were still getting used, although as digital cameras got better, those film images just weren’t holding up as well to the new higher resolution sensors.

In March of 2007, I downloaded WordPress to my computer and started this blog. Blogging turned into a pretty big thing for me. Who knew? The article you’re reading right now is the 919th post I’ve written on this site. If you’ve read some or most of them over the years, then I’d like to thank you for your patronage.

In September of 2008, I moved to Alaska and weathered another big recession. I also began my pilots license. Three years later, in the fall of 2011, I bought my first Fujifilm camera and started my amazing journey with the X Series. By then, I’d already bough my little Cessna and began my adventures as a bush pilot and aerial photographer.

Around then, I wrote my first eBook. I have seven now. In 2015, I had my first real book published. My third one will be out this spring.

28 years is a long time. My photography life has spanned my entire existence as an adult, (I was 22 on that fateful day). It has lived through an extensive history of important world events as well as a memorable collection of moments in my own history.

Anyone who knows me will say that I am photography and photography is me. We’re forever intertwined. It’s been such an amazing and inspiring journey so far, one that I never would have foreseen 28 years ago.

Back then, I was just an energetic kid with a new found fascination for this cool, creative craft. Not much has changed. I’m still that kid. I still love it just as much, in fact, way more. I’m still just trying to follow my dream, I just have 28 years of experience and practice under my belt.

What do you think you can accomplish in that kind of time frame? That’s an exciting question, isn’t it?

As I look at my own shadow today, I can only imagine what the next 28 years will bring. I’m looking forward to finding out.

Follow @Danbaileyphoto